National Vaccine Establishment. 33 
On the Vaccine Disorder, ly Dr. Servanpo DE MEIr ¥ 
NorirGca, an Ecclesiastic*. 
Dated London, 10th January 1813. 
The small-pox, as well as the measles, were unknown in 
New Spain before the conquest. They were brought there, 
says Torquemadat, by a negro from Pamfilo of Narvaez, 
and they occasioned such destruction, that he does not he- 
sitate to affirm that the greatest part of the Indians died, 
among whom was the emperor Cuitlahuatzin, who succeeded 
Montezume. It is stated, that according to the reports 
which Cortes ordered to be made to him, there died in the 
einpire of Mexico alone three millions and a half. It was 
not long before fresh variolous infection was brought over, 
and according to Torquemada eight hundred thousand In- 
dians perished, 
Europe has continued to communicate this scourge at 
intervals of thirty, twenty, or a less number of years, and 
the infection extending itself from Vera Cruz to the most- 
remote parts, has like a destructive plague spread terror, 
death and desolation, over that continent. The longer it 
is retarded, the more fatal it becomes, because the danger 
increases with the age of the sufferers. Thirty-three years 
ago there were carried off more than ten thousand persons 
in the towns of Mexico and Puebla alone by this contagion, 
which was the last but one that has visited4bat kingdom, 
and was brought there after an interval of nineteen years, 
Jt was from this last attack that I was a sufferer in 
my native country, Monterry, the capital of the new 
kingdom of Leon: and there was not a family who did not 
put on mourning. Some of these families disappeared al- 
together, because they were all adult persons, and had been 
seized by the epidemic in the city. Toose who lived in 
the country were preserved from its influence by banking 
the dung-hills of the Jarge and small catile around their 
dwellings. 
The small-pox acts with the greatest virulence upon those 
parts of the body most exposed to the sun, such as the face 
and hands; and as the Indians are more exposed by their 
habit of life and manner of clothing, the havoc which it 
makes amoung them is more horrible. 
Torquemada says, speaking of the first introduction of 
the infection, that the reason why it killed so many, was, 
* From “ Report of the National Vaccine Establishment, 2¢th April 1813. 
+ A Spanish historian, 
Vol. 42. No, 183. July 1813, C because 
